Inspire, equip and coach the next generation of great founders across Southeast Asia

Thank you for your kind interest in management consulting as a career. Here is the set of materials for your review that will allow you to better understand this career and the needed preparation.

What is management consulting? What is the history and future of the field?

• Definition: Wikipedia

• History: Overview, McKinsey, and The Lords of Strategy.

• Future: Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption by Clayton Christensen, and Quora Response on Adaption Strategies

I want to be a management consultant. How do I get in?

• (MANDATORY) 95% of your questions on process, resumes and interviews are answered here: Management Consulted e.g. fit interviews, market sizing tips, etc.

• If you want answers from other consultants or have questions of your own: Quora Overview

• If you are preparing for the case interview, I highly recommend these two books: Case Interviews (master framework and practice cases) and Market Sizing

• I presented a marketsizing drill session for fellow HBS students

Tell me more about your experiences!

• “What is X firm like to work at?”: Glassdoor

• “What is Bain & Co. Southeast Asia / Singapore like to work at?”: Great firm. These reviews echo my experience.

• “I’d like a referral to Bain Southeast Asia”: Bain Recruiting is awesome, just reach out to them directly

• “My life as a Bain management consulting star and partner” is an excellent read as well as “Why I Never Wanted to Go Into Business: Confessions of a Bain Consultant”

Thank you for your kind interest in a Harvard MBA. Here is the set of materials for your review that will allow you to better understand this career and the needed preparation.

What is an MBA? What value does an MBA add? Is it worth it?

• Definition: Wikipedia

• Does an MBA help you become a better entrepreneur? Here’s a simple articulation of the differences

• How does HBS teach with the Case Method? Here’s a list of benefits (and disadvantages)

I want an MBA, especially from Harvard! How do I get in?

• Read everything here at Poets & Quants (Please! This will cover about 99% of most questions)

• Friends of mine have had success with working with admission consultants

• Stacy Blackman

• MBA Link (Based in Singapore at The Hub)

• Admissions Consultant Directory

• If you get an interview, there’s a guide here

Tell me more about your experiences!

• “What is HBS like?”: You can read this profile and on Quora

• I’m also chronicling everything that I’m learning at HBS

• “Can you write my recommendation to business school?”: You should be seeking a recommendation from your direct supervisor.

• Reflections by 1963 HBS alumni is an excellent read - totally recommended as a reminder that HBS is just a small chunk of your life, and definitely not a marker of success

What was your journey like?

• Terrible grades for Junior College due to a personal loss

• Went off to serve the Singapore Army - Studied SATs and GMAT in the jungle by torchlight, evenings and days off. Cut up my SAT prep books and placed into ziploc bags for waterproofing.

• Applied to prove to universities that I was stronger academically, got into Berkeley

• Did social impact consulting and thus management consulting

• In senior year, realised that my GMAT score was very decent and thus applied to HBS early

• Got my HBS offer in late 2011

How did you prepare?

Please note that this was years ago!

• In 2007 while in the army, I studied the GMAT Prep Book by Princeton Review (paperback) and did 2 online free tests in the evenings and weekends. I got a decent score with this method, your experience may vary.

• In 2011, I bought this book to understand the process. It was amazing for me.

• I also referred to these articles - Application Checklist , Tips for College Applicants and Applicant Profiles

Do you think the case method is effective?

• Current: updated by industries and geographies annually

• e.g. Ebay, Tom Brady, digital cameras

• Includes social entrepreneurship cases

• hospital, create light bulbs, how to market a disruptive product

How to get the most out of the core curriculum?

• industry orientation:

• case studies cover a breadth of functional skills and strategies in different geographies and situations so you learn the basic principals

• leadership can be geographical/industry-specific

• come in with some bounded exploration; not company specific but industry-specific so you can apply these skills and strategies through an industry sense

• role orientation:

• point of view from a role that ranges from management to CEO where you are expected to make decisions and run teams

• entrepreneur: founding vs. scaling vs. maintening

• training for series B managers

• many opportunities to join series A companies

• many resources for the founding

• so think about what you mean by “entrepreneurial” because resources differ

Do you get to design your FIELD experiences?

• FIELD 2: I was assigned a project to redesign the customer experience at a “Pottery Barn/ Bed Bath & Beyond” in Turkey

• teaches design thinking

• most classmates not super enthusiastic/passionate because of many commitments and other opportunities

• Large Class size

What opportunities do you have for meeting other people? Have you joined clubs or associations?

• section, clubs, parties

• joined health care club, social enterprise club

• to be integrated in clubs, it is better to be in leadership team

• clubs are mostly for educational purposes instead of community

• Career: Are you able to access career resources?

• Focus on health: Medicare event, Entrepreneurship panel, met up with professor

Is HBS a hard place for an introvert?

• There is a high level of extroversion

• a huge spike in the beginning

• general attribute of students - select more extroverts

• leadership behaviors - display extrovert behaviors when necessary

• each class forced to debate, may have to be confrontational

• trains introverts in public speaking

Is HBS a stressful place?

• there are mandatory and opt in opportunities so manage your time and the number of activities you participate in

• people who overexert themselves usually don’t know what to focus on so they do everything and then get burned out

personal reflection: what’s important to you? What metrics could you use to evaluate opportunities?

• take the time out to review, to integrate the lessons

• don’t need to be top 10%

• quality conversations

• industrial role or geography focus

General Advice before coming in

• Take time to reflect before b-school begins

• HBS will teach you how to get to where you want to be but it will not tell you WHO to be, nor who you want to be

• Write down who you want to be

• Write down the jobs you don’t want to do - e.g. banker, bain consultant

• Reflect with friends and mentors

• e.g. what should I not learn at HBS

• Write a personal mission statement, while understanding that how you execute might change and you can still refresh the mission statement along the way

Singapore is a great city-state in SE Asia, and I’m glad that you’re on the way here. Here’s my favourite reads and haunts that I hope that you find handy.

Learn about Singapore (15min)

• Read about Singapore today and her history since 0300s

• Learn about Singapore’s geopolitical strengths and future geopolitical trends

Understand History and Politics

• Understand Singapore’s next 50 years in terms of Politics and Governance, Economy and Business, Security and Sustainability, Demography and Family, and Society and Identity

Review social needs and differences

• Remember that Singapore has its own distinct communication/ negotiation style

• Understand what local Singlish is

• Singapore like any developed country still has social needs and an aging population

Eat your heart out

The key dishes that you have to go through

• Get yourself introduced to a Singaporean food checklist

• Buy a local food guide

• Eat chilli crab

• Savour beef marrow and stain your fingers with Sup Tulang

• Chow on Indian food at Komala Vilas

• Eat satay at Gardens by the Bay

• Eat local Peranakan Cuisine at Candlenut

My personal favourites

• Plan your vacation with the tourism website

• Sit at the bar and chat at Maison Ikkoku

• Nurse a beverage at Divine Wine Bar (live music 9pm-12am M-F)

• Learn about Singapore at the National Museum (my favourite) and the Peranakan Museum

• Take sunset & cityscape photos while swimming at MBS infinity pool

• Enjoy the sunset while walking around Marina Bay

• Play foosball at the hipster French restaurant at Wanderlust Hotel

• Work out of the Hub Singapore on your social venture

• Watch comedy at Kumar and Blue Jaz Cafe

• Hike the Green Corridor

• Find a lost Shinto shrine in Macritchie

• Visit Changi Chapel

• Cycle around Palau Ubin

• Watch the Marina Bay Sands Laser Show daily at 8pm, 9.30pm and (Fri, Sat) 11pm

• Take a photo with the local Merlion

• Enjoy the view at the Esplanade

Explore the SE Asia Region

• Island retreats: http://www.travelfish.org/islands.php

• Retreat at Batam

• Hike to Kawah Ijen

You mentioned taking time to reflect before business school on who you want to be and writing a personal mission statement. Did you know you wanted to start a company at HBS?

• Took time before HBS (silent retreat, hiking) to reflect on who he was thankful for, and what he had learned
• HBS wasn’t a new chapter by itself — it was the beginning of a new chapter
• Didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew what he didn’t want to do
• FOMO only exists if you don’t know what you care about
• What was important:
• Becoming a great CEO (had already been a founder before)
• Scope and responsibilities change as company grows
• Took courses on entrepreneurial finance, negotiations, sales. Many of the entrepreneurial courses were around scaling, not necessarily founding / design-thinking
• Some things you can learn, some things you just have to do
• Fools learn from experience, wise men and women learn from fools; learned fundamentals from others
• Met hundreds of startups virtually
• Meet a new person every day
• if he was busy throughout the day and hadn’t gotten a chance to meet anyone yet, he would purposefully seek out an event to meet someone
• Join or create something he cared about
• interested in health care startup space, making decisions, social impact, creating things
• He had a strong inkling that he would start a company or be a part of an early stage company. He had a thesis that healthcare was a vertical he was interested in.
• Started meeting people through hackathons, tech club,  e-club
• Was working on MindBamboo a year or two before HBS, but started testing it out further at HBS, as soon as the first semester

CozyKin was award 2nd Prize at the HBS New Venture Competition, funded at the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, and winner of the top award at MassChallenge. How did you decide which competitions / resources to pursue?

• Determine first what you need
• Co-working space
• physical space to work
• Incubators
• like the iLab
• Work and hang out with other founders
• More startup oriented vs. co-working space
• Accelerators
• They take a % of company, but get community, PR, cash
• If looking for an idea, hang out with entrepreneurs, go to hackathons, and brainstorm
• Getting into these competitions is relatively easy. Winning only comes if you have traction: good idea and team --> product market fit --> traction

What did you do between your RC and EC year?

• Worked on startup
• Did Rock Summer Fellowship